(part 2) to think that Camila Batmanghelidgh must be lying when she says she has done nothing wrong in her spending of Kids' Company Funding?

[LuluJakey1]

She is like Jimmy Saville in that what she has been doing has been under all of all our noses and we have refused to speak up about it or believe it.

It is not just the luvvies who have been up close and personal with her- involved with the charity and CB at a very close level, some even Trustees. It is also the employees and the parents of children, the children themselves, the volunteers. We are not talking about a hidden mis-use of funding. We are talking aout a whole culture of open waste and self-indulgence.

I know it is from The Daily Mail but it is actually an interview with het.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3199527/My-heart-clear-says-Kids-Company-boss-Batmanghelidjh-admits-charity-paid-school-fees-employees-children-denies-wrongdoing.html

£5000 a month rent on an Art Deco House with private swimming pool - which houses a member of staff, and the swimming pool is used by CB but hot by any children- they are 'not allowed' (her words)

£40,000 chauffeur- now a specialist worker (according to CB). also has private school and therapist funding for his 2 children.

Staff( how many?) have their children sent to private schools because the job is stressful and it is part of a 'staff well-being package'

The Chauffeur's sister is also employed - now as a 'brilliant accountant', last summer as 'the woman who does my sewing' (mind you that would be a full-time job in itself, but it does imply the charity pays for those vile outfits much as I suspected)

25 young people given £769,000 a year funding - £31,000 a year each, to do nothing. They are CB's specially selected young people- many of whom have received funding for many years. She describes them as 'like a family, hanging round the house'. She deals with their funding herself.

Yet STILL CB complains staff should not have spoken up about any of this and implies those who have will suffer for it.

In my view this woman and her behaviours are corrupt, dishonest and immoral.

Are my views unreasonable? I feel this could be jus the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is yet to emerge and prosecutions will be very likely.

I think there should be a down- to the -bone, in-depth investigation of every aspect of the work of this charity and of CB. Not simply any concerns that have now been raised but a complete trawl of the spending, the practices and the behaviours of CB herself.

she lied about being a psychotherapist

I was under the impression that anyone could call themselves a psychotherapist as it wasn't a protected title. I'm not defending CB by the way. It seems clear that she has misled peoplet she lied about being a psychotherapist, misused funds in a fairly major and systematic way.

The question about her qualifications was hilarious. It was the point you knew the rest was going to be compulsive viewing. Several minutes of evasive waffle ending up with 'life experience counts for a lot'. Still not sure what the 18 years training was for. She could have qualified as a psychiatrist in less than that.

Anyone can call themselves a psychotherapist, but CB was attempting to pull rank by saying she was a "qualified psychotherapist" wasn't she?

I'm shocked she isn't in jail awaiting trial. She has stolen millions and Yentob should be in the cell next to hers. They have taken valuable resources away from the very group that needed it. So many lies and half truths.

I agree these is a gap in government care but it's hardly surprising when she was sucking so much money out of the system.

She claimed to have been the youngest ever student on her psychotherapy Masters course, didn't she? Or was that some other fictitious qualification?

Driver Yes, she did make that claim, and I believe it was publicly debunked either by a journalist or by the institution itself (Regents University?).

I haven't yet watched or listened to the select committee interview. Here are the specific claims she makes about her qualifications in an Independent profile (www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/passedfailed-an-education-in-the-life-of-camila-batmanghelidjh-the-founder-of-kids-company-428298.html):

"Then, at Regent's College in London, I did a four-year psychotherapy and philosophy Masters. I knew as a nine-year-old that I would work with children, and I did a two-year infant and child observation course at the Tavistock Clinic in London, and then one-year course in art psychotherapy at Goldsmiths - all using a tape recorder."

Are we to understand that she never took the courses at Regent's, Goldsmiths or the Tavistock? If so, that's absolutely shocking, and I wonder why those institutions haven't previously set the record straight.

(Incidentally, is there such a thing as a four-year Masters degree? Masters are normally one or two years.)

Here you are: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3214710/Why-does-Kids-Company-Camila-tell-tall-stories-life-troubling-investigation-reveals-colourful-acount-past-doesn-t-quite-add-up.html
Yes, it's the DM, but the reporter seems to have done some research.

I looked this up for the previous thread. "Psychologist" and "clinical ppsychologist" and the like are protected titles and anything with "psychotherapist" is not. "Qualified psychotherapist" is a bit of a non-sequitur IIRC.

Thanks, nortonhouse. She is extraordinary! Rachael Johnson in today's MoS accuses her of colourful exaggeration, but it's so much more than that.

For anyone interested, the key bit about her education is this para:

"ntioch University, which in the Eighties operated an overseas campus at an 'educational industrial park' in London, on the site of what is now Regent's University. A spokesman for Antioch says she began its MA course in 'Psychology of Therapy and Counselling' in the autumn of 1986, aged 23, and graduated five years later."

Five years is an awfully long time to do an MA.

I also wonder whether anyone else has any views on her supposedly winning an art competition for adults at the age of 9? I ask because she talks a lot about her poor spatial skills, and I'd be surprised if someone who lacked spatial skills was also a talented artist.

don't know about when CB was at university, but there are quite a few 4 year Masters courses in STEM subjects nowadays - they are the usual three year BSc continuing on to a fourth year. Handily they're funded by Student Finance as they are a first degree, but you get the Masters out of it. DD1 graduated this year with a 4 year MMath; one of DD2s current applications is a for a four year MSci which has the final year as a research year.

Hackmum - I wondered that too. I also wondered how a severely dyslexic 9-year-old managed to get through all those psychology journals. And why, if working with children was her vocation, she chose to do a degree in drama.

Yes, House, it does all look very fishy, doesn't it? One of the things I find interesting about compulsive liars is that they clearly can go a long time without getting found out, because people as a rule aren't suspicious. And after a while their lies become more and more outrageous. Jeffrey Archer springs to mind.

Thanks, MyVisions - would be interesting to know about the particular MA CB did after her drama degree.

also meant to say, thanks to everyone on this thread, I'm finding it fascinating and horrifying in equal measures.

"Psychologist" and "clinical ppsychologist" and the like are protected titles

Clinical psychologist and practitioner psychologist are protected titles but 'psychologist' isn't. Emma Kenny who pops up on This Morning, GMTV and those trashy 'Inside the mind of a serial killer' describes herself as a psychologist despite only having an undergraduate psychology degree from Manchester Met.

I think she comes across as probably the most devious woman I've ever heard of.

Her arrogance is breathtaking; surely she's deluded if she imagines that the sheer rubbish she's sprouting will be believed?

I also completely fail to understand how she and Yentob have got away with it for so long, the Charity Commission and Companies House should have smelled a rat years ago.

Also, £750,000 for private healthcare for family members of her favourite staff was put through the books as 'clinical staffing costs'

That is either defrauding donors or defrauding HMRC.

That is either defrauding donors or defrauding HMRC.

Actually it's both, as it's stuff that the donors clearly wouldn't have approved of (although whether that's criminal fraud or just mora fraud is an interesting question) but it's also the provision of benefits in kind without paying the associated tax and NI, which is clearly tax evasion both on the part of the charity and on the part of its employees.

If an investigation wants to unstop the mouths of the employees, they might like to clout all the staff for tax evasion (both the benefits in kind and the practice of treating employees as "clients" and giving them cash in hand) and see if they'll talk when offered immunity.

I suspect alot of this information is already coming from ex staff. It is exactly the kind of thing that one of the little people would have been told to put through the books because the 'grown ups' knew better.

But, yes it appears that many of the inner circle have underpaid a lot of tax.

KC must have spent a lot of time devising the many and varied ways they could get out of paying tax and NI.

Didn't they tax their employees but keep the cash?

Weren't they let off a massive tax bill after Govt intervention?

Any comment from donors?

"KC must have spent a lot of time devising the many and varied ways they could get out of paying tax and NI.
"

They couldn't though. It's not even a tax dodge, just fraud. All of this was taxable.

Oh no, I wasn't suggesting for a moment they were being lawful.

Fishboneschokus

Any comment from donors? I've not heard anything from any of the Donors although I suspect they are trying to distance themselves from this whole matter.

"Notes from within the Pilgrim Trust reveal that its staff regarded Kids Company's behaviour as "suspicious" even before the first grant was paid.

Documents seen by BBC Newsnight and BuzzFeed News show the charity provided a litany of excuses for not supplying them with information, ranging from a "specific learning disability" which prevents Ms Batmanghelidjh from using a computer keyboard, to a bank manager responsible for reproducing withdrawal slips "falling off a roof and [being] off sick"."

The above quote is taken from this article www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34508149 which suggests that Ms Battyasafruitcakeandcunningasabarrelloadoffoxes Batmanghelidjh's various self-professed learning disabilities do not impede her ability to substitute fiction for fact and that this salient fact was known as early as 2002, which begs the question of why she was allowed to continue exploiting taxpayers and unsuspecting donors until August of this year?

From Wiki it appears that "In mid-August 2015, Batmanghelidjh announced that she would be opening a food kitchen in Lambeth, South London. She said fifty former staff had volunteered to help run the Kids Dining Room to provide food for up to 3,000 children and young people".

Only 3,000? What about the other c36,000 needy and deprived children and young people who were allegedly beneficiaries of Kids Company services? Will they be bused in on a daily basis from Southwark, north London, Liverpool and Bristol, or will CB and her former staff be delivering meals to 'street level centres'?